Well it sounds like GC is the LAST place to be.
The only relation to SWR is that back in - I don't really know, the early 80's I guess - Steve Rabe (Mr. SWR) and Russ Allee (allegedly Acoustic Designer, then Eden Consultant) work together somehow to design this amplifier for A.M.P. (Amplified Music Products). After some success, Gibson bought the line from A.M.P., made a couple changes that destroyed the reliability, and after a couple years pulled the product and put it in a warehouse, perhaps around 1990.
Dave Funk was doing repairs for Gibson, and one of the managers approached him and asked if he wanted to purchase the contents of a warehouse they were cleaning out. When he bought it, I think early last year, he found the remnants of the line, including enough spare parts to build about 30 amps. He did so, sold them direct, and became very interested in both the legacy and the tone. This evolved into early TFB's, starting with a new case and slowly being tweaked based on customer comments and his own ear.
The above is what I have as a history. Please consider this an open invitation for anyone to add, dispute or otherwise inform me.
I've been working with Dave for about three months, helping get this to market. We are peas-in-a-pod but each with a distinct role, and we and seem to work well together. Dave, like me is an old bass player from, well "the old days" of the 70's.
The tweaks have continued, but we are "through" for now. It is time to sell these in greater than ones and twos. Hence the Retailing Dealers Plan.
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As for the Tone Controls and SWR, I would be Really curious what you think after hearing the amp.
A recent posting (not by me!) in another thread called "thunderfunk" said this: "The new circuit changes make the amp both smoother (especially in the highs) and punchier at the same time. The highs are so sweet, that I'm not even really conscious of even having a piezo in the Genz cab. Piezos in general kind of drive me crazy and this particular cab doesn't have a tweeter level adjust. Anyway, it's really a non-issue with the Thunderfunk."
I do note that SWR's parametrics overlap some, and the TF's do not. The SWR line obviously has "evolved" over the past 15 years, and I do not think this one has. Dave has made a few tonally-important power supply modifications, namely a new transformer and upping the filtering but 150% to make the amp a little more hi-fi like, and there have been some materials changes in the preamp, like the substitution of Mica and Film types, and there have been some Op-Amp changes. Most of these changes have been made to lower noise. See the attached file for the preamp details.
I'm trying to get a better understanding of the SWR sound, the Eden sound, the Ampeg sound, etc. Frankly, I've been out of the bass circles for quite a while (check my profile). When I was very active, there were only the Fender and Ampeg Tube sounds, and Alembic was a happening revolution.
Again, sorry for the length - Hopefully this is not perceived as Spam. I'm just telling the story as I understand it, and ya'll seem interested.
